Fastest Active Writers in Science Fiction and Fantasy

When you think of fast-working modern SFF writers, the chances are the first name that comes to mind is Brandon Sanderson. By 2023, he’d published 71 books, and over the past two years, he’s released well over a dozen titles. He's so prolific that he decided to start self-publishing some works, and the Kickstarter campaign to support that endeavor in 2022 became the most successful in history, finishing with 185,341 backers pledging US$41,754,153! Sanderson's speediness is so legendary that he was chosen by the Robert Jordan estate to complete the Wheel of Time series after Jordan's death. He turned what was meant to be one book into three, and he finished that in record time!

Romance novels have always known about the brilliance of Nora Robers. The queen of the genre has hundreds of books to her name and has helped to shape romantic fiction for mainstream audiences for decades now. But not content with writing two or three books a year under her own name, she also publishes sci-fi crime fiction under the pseudonym J.D. Robb. This series, now 61 books long with the 62^nd title being published this February, follows Eve Dallas, a New York City detective in the year 2058. But Roberts doesn’t keep her SFF intrigue to the world of crime. Many of her romance novels feature witches, fae, and stories of the speculative. 

Piers Anthony started writing in the '60s, with his first work being published in 1967 (and receiving both Hugo and Nebula award nominations), and he hasn't stopped since. Most sci-fi fans will know him best for the Xanth series, also known as The Magic of Xanth. This saga, which currently totals 48 books and counting, is set in a world where magic exists and every human has a magical talent (and puns are everywhere!)

What is there left to say about the legendary Stephen King? The king of horror fiction is an icon in every way and his work speaks for itself. He remains highly prolific after five decades in the business, publishing on average one new book a year. His books have sold more than 400 million copies, and as well as having 67 books to his name, he's written more than 200 short stories. Right now, he's dedicated to exploring the world of the private eye Holly Gibney, but there's so much in his near-mythic back-catalog to explore: from the extended Derry universe that includes It, Dreamcatcher, and 11/22/63, to the epic apocalyptic battle between good and evil in The Stand, to his sprawling, highly ambitious and trippily meta Dark Tower series.

For decades, Mercedes Lackey has been pushing the boundaries of fantasy fiction, exploring issues of gender, sexuality, and class within the genre that helped to pave the way for the modern romantasy boom. Her biggest work is the Valdemar universe, a fantasy world that's split up across multiple series. That one is over 50 titles long! She also frequently co-writes works with her husband Larry Dixon. 

The chances are you haven’t heard of Pirateaba, but their masterwork is one of the longest published works in history! The Wandering Inn is a web-novel centred on Erin Solstice, a young woman from Earh who finds herself transported to a fantasy world inspired by roleplaying games where she takes on the job of innkeeper. Little is known about the author, who has worked to retain their privacy, but their output can’t be denied. According to most estimates, The Wandering Inn has surpassed 15 million words! To put that in comparison, Robert Jordan's notoriously long Wheel of Time saga was about 4.3 million words long.

After studying zoology and psychology, then becoming a legal executive, Adrian Tchaikovsky wrote fiction on the side for many years until he became a full-time author in 2018. Since then, he's only grow more prolific, and more widely read, winning the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2023. He writes epic sci-fi space operas, sly alternate worlds full of monsters, grimdark fantasies with political slants, and satirical tales of robots with feelings. He published five works in 2025 alone. If you're looking for a good starting point with his work, check out the Children of Time series, which the scattering of humanity across space in search of a terraformed planet they can call home.

Canadian writer, anthropologist, and archaeologist Steven Erikson is best known for his fantasy series Malazan Book of the Fallen. It's a truly epic saga that spans thousands of years, multiple continents, and hundreds of characters. Over the course of 26 books, Erikson has written millions of words, and that doesn't count the installments written by other authors like Ian Cameron Esslemont! Outside of Malazan, Erikson remains prolific with stand-alone titles and other series, such as the Kharkanas saga (which comes in at a slimmer 655,000 words across two books, with a third on the horizon.)

As well as being a historian with a PhD in Byzantine history, Harry Turtledove is an immensely prolific writer of sci-fi, fantasy, and alternate histories. He's especially prolific in stories with alternate histories, worlds where the Nazis won the Second World War or aliens invaded during the midst of it. Publishers Weekly even crowned him "the master of alternate history." He began publishing novels in 1979 and hasn't stopped since. As well as his government name, Turtledove writes under the pen names Eric Iverson, H. N. Turteltaub, Dan Chernenko, and Mark Gordian. Over the decades, Turtledove has written dozens of novels across various genres, as well as even more short stories. He won the Hugo Award for Novella in 1994 for the novella Down in the Bottomlands.

There's being prolific, and then there's having three pen-names because you're so prolific. Seanan McGuire also writes under the names Mira Grant (for sci-fi/horror) and A. Deborah Baker (for her children's series), but it's under her government name where she publishes the stories that have the most fans declaring their adoration. McGuire has won the Alex Award, Hugo Award, Locus Award, and Nebula Award for her urban fantasy and SFF works. 

The Wayward Children novellas are set in a world where magical doors open up a seemingly infinite number of worlds. InCryptid follows a family of cryptozoologists protecting mankind from supernatural threats. McGuire's most famous heroine is October Daye, a half-fae changeling and private eye who straddles the space between the human and faerie worlds. The 19th novel in the series was published last year, but there are over 40 stories within the Daye universe. And if that wasn't enough, McGuire also writes comic books for Marvel and shares short stories for fans on her Patreon page.

Featured images via Wikimedia Commons.